


Antropomorphobia

by lavvyan



Category: Boa vs. Python (2004), Thoughtcrimes (2003)
Genre: Angst, Anthropomorphism - Freefom, Drama, F/M, M/M, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-03
Updated: 2010-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-12 09:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavvyan/pseuds/lavvyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emmett being a Naga doesn't improve his love life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sliding Scales

What Emmett misses when he's with Betty is kissing. It's one of the few things about humans he actually likes. But then she will slither up next to him, their long, scaled bodies intertwining, and the slide of his scales over hers when he caresses her will make him forget all about soft, meaty tongues. Who could possibly want naked, rosy flesh, if there are granular plates of the most beautiful scarlet and black, hard and scratchy against his cheek when he leans against her?

Emmett is Naga, one of the few that still have the ability to pass as human, and he uses that advantage as best he can. He's a herpetologist, like most of the other 'human' snakes he knows, trying to convince the stupid half of his ancestry that just because it doesn't come on legs you don't automatically have to kill it. When people ask him why he's so obsessed with finding a universal antivenom, he usually feeds them some sad little story about how his kid sister died when she was bitten by a snake, leaving them all teary-eyed and "sure, Dr. Emmett, have another hundred thousand dollars", which isn't all that much, but it keeps them fed. But the reason, the _actual reason_ he fills his little brethren with poison before he feeds them to Betty, is so his kind doesn't get slaughtered by idiots who just won't understand. They're few enough as it is; they don't need farmers shooting at their offspring, mistaking them with normal snakes.

Betty, as he had named her when she had hatched in his hands, is also Naga, but of a different family. Her story is a tragic one, the only of her mother's eggs to hatch, the last of her kind, no longer able to take on the human form, but too large to be ignored by their soft-skinned relatives. Scarlet Queen Boa he calls her, and a queen she is, but even an idiot should be able to see she's nothing like a member of the _boidae_ – she's got teeth, for god's sake. But the so-called ophiologists never even got _that_ one, so Emmett merrily goes on about 'the only boa to lay eggs' and 'largest specimen on the planet' and 'yes, corpuscular', and no one tells him off.

It's a bit sad, actually. You can read on any website that _constrictors_ are nocturnal.

Still, he's getting away with it, and that's what counts. He has raised Betty, protected her, and he willingly goes whenever she calls for him with scent and the languorous slide of her body. He joins with her, covering her sleek body with his own and pushing his tail underneath her. That's usually when he misses the kissing: when they coil up together, both of them aroused, aligning their vents so he can push one of his hemipenes inside her, and then staying like that for hours. It's hot and humid inside her terrarium, and sometimes he's glad that he can't sweat when they're twitching and coiling, their bodies connected through the whole night. There is no orgasm when he finally ejaculates, and that's the second thing Emmett misses. He will not go looking for a human partner, though. After all, those are the ones he could accidentally get pregnant.

For Betty, he's the only one she has. And snakes don't like socializing all that much, anyway. So what if he feels a bit lonely every once in a while?

Sometimes, though, he wonders how aware she really is. Does she recognise him as anything other than the one who comes to feed her? Does she know it's him who spends the night when the air is humid and her hormones make her restless?

Does she know his name?

It's not important, not really. It is his self-appointed duty to look out for her, just like he looks out for all the other Naga who have found their way to the Longreen Snake Institue in Elkins, West Virginia, spending their days in the cramped safety of terrariums and feeding on mice. Emmett has a responsibility, and there's no time to dwell on pointless thoughts.

But sometimes, he wonders.


	2. Mermaids Are Dead Anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Emmett is something out of a fairy tale himself; he's Naga, which is basically a mermaid with a snake bottom instead of the fish parts. And like the little mermaid, he has left everything behind for someone who'll never understand what a sacrifice it has been._

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.

A lot of stories start with these words; good stories, sometimes. Bad ones, too, and of course most of them are just mediocre. Still, once upon a time, words forever associated with fairy tales. And ask anyone on the street, and they will tell you that fairy tales are about love and happily ever after, which just goes to show that they know nothing at all.

Take the little mermaid, for example. It's about love, granted, but it's pain and desperation and death, and it ends with tears. The old fairy tales are like that. Blood and pain and a good dose of reality.

Emmett is something out of a fairy tale himself; he's Naga, which is basically a mermaid with a snake bottom instead of the fish parts. And like the little mermaid, he has left everything behind for someone who'll never understand what a sacrifice it has been.

Brendan can hardly be called a prince, although he's rakish and courageous and one of the good guys. But after only knowing him for a week – and kissing and orgasms and god, how he had missed that – Emmett had willingly abandoned the work of a lifetime, had left his brethren, had left _Betty,_ to follow Brendan to a city filled with too many people, where every breath was like a stab to the lungs because of all the poison that hung in the air. But he had honestly thought that it would be worth it.

Obviously Emmett, too, doesn't know anything at all.

As for his happily ever after, well. Let's just say that after watching Brendan gradually fall in love with his slender, black-haired – _female,_ his mind whispers, _human_ – partner, it doesn't seem all that likely. They still have sex, sure, and Emmett isn't above desperately clinging to it, but it's not the same without... feeling. Oh, Brendan cares for him, sure, just... just not in the right way.

And then one day, naturally, it's over.

It would be so easy for Freya to have an accident involving anything from lizards to earthworms, because Naga are powerful like that. So temptingly easy, and then Emmett would get to offer love and comfort to his devastated _prince,_ and to whisper-tell him a lot of things, but still nothing about what he is, what he has done.

Emmett has learned, though, that temptation hardly ever leads to something good; at least this he has learned, and so he smiles, and wishes them the best of luck, and gets ready to leave even though he has nothing to return to.

Once upon a time, there lived a Naga who fell in love with a man. And no harm will ever come to either Brendan or Freya that can be prevented by the hidden bite of a snake, or by the fatal mishap that can be caused by the sudden appearance of a gecko. It's Emmett's gift to happily ever after.

He thinks he might be what they call a good person for this. It doesn't make him feel any better.


	3. Now at Least

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Brendan finds him in Lakeport._

Brendan finds him in Lakeport, CA, where Emmett has been studying _Charina bottae_ for almost a year after his fruitless search for Betty. Well, carefully collecting Naga, really – for some reason, his small relatives are drawn to this place. He's been alone ever since Brendan found his happiness with Freya, not really wanting another partner. His kind usually loves _once,_ and Emmett is no exception.

Their meeting is awkward, the conversation full of uneasy pauses. It feels painful, and if Brendan needs Emmett's expertise with some case or other, he should just say so.

But that's not the reason Brendan is here. He tells Emmett of a case they solved, he and Freya, where someone had been killing ophiologists, one of which died a creature half man, half snake. There were others like him; Naga, they called themselves, and their existence suddenly explains the four times Brendan's life has been saved by various kinds of scaly things.

Emmett bristles at the word 'things', and Brendan apologises, and really, that's not the point anyway. Because somehow, Brendan _knows,_ and it has made him come back. To do what, Emmett isn't sure.

To get him back, it turns out. Freya, for all she should have been tolerant, had turned away in disgust from the dying man-snake on the floor, something which Brendan, already drawing the connections, couldn't forgive. He has been looking for Emmett ever since.

Emmett doesn't want to be loved because he's some kind of exotic being, no matter how much he wants to just take Brendan and hold him and never let him go, and it has to show on his face. For Brendan stares at his feet and murmurs something about being an idiot and usually making a mess of his private life and missing him. Missing him so much he took on a case about snakes just to feel a little closer to him, and that's as sweet as it's pathetic.

It would be a risk to start again, Emmett knows that, and still he takes Brendan back to the small apartment he rented and, for the first time in his life, shows his self - _basically a mermaid with a snake bottom instead of the fish parts_ – to a human being. Brendan's eyes show no revulsion, only a confused awe, as he steps up and cautiously takes Emmett into his arms, his fingers gliding over smooth scales where Emmett's legs no longer are. The touch is shy, questioning, but not hesitant, and when Brendan's eyes ask for a kiss, Emmett allows himself to comply.

They don't have sex when Emmett is Naga. Even though Brendan's hands curiously explore the strangeness of Emmett's hemipenes, Emmett has missed orgasms too much, is hungry for the slide of skin on skin. It's not perfect, this human way of being with each other, but then again, what is?

He still doesn't believe in happily ever after. But when Brendan stays a week, a month, a year, Emmett starts to have faith in now.


End file.
